We rattled down to the foreshore and turned along the coast road, bowling along it at a great pace, every now and then meeting wounded men limping wearily towards San Fernando. Some of our own ward-room officers were tramping back to catch the ’dinner’ boat off to the ship, and they must have envied me pretty considerably. Thank goodness, the Skipper had given me forty-eight hours’ leave, and I hadn’t to get aboard till to-morrow at noon. I was so jolly keen to see some more fun, and to tell Gerald how I’d managed to bring those guns back to San Fernando, that I forgot all about being so sleepy. The road ran along the top of the beach, skirting the shore all the way, and the forest came right up to the side of it, and made it beautifully shady, but it was in such a terrible state of holes and ruts, crumbling down here and there on the beach side, and overgrown with bushes on the forest side, that it looked as if the sea and the forest between them would swallow it up pretty soon. Four miles out from the town there were two poor chaps lying by the roadside; I expect they had been wounded during the night, and had tried to make their way into San Fernando, but died before they could do so. Horrid-looking crows, something like vultures, were hopping about round them. I hated the brutes—they hardly got out of the way of the wheels. Just as it was getting dusk we passed some bungalows, and the native driver shouted, ’_Marina! El Casino!_’ pointing ahead to a large building in front of us standing close to the beach. ’_Don Geraldio!_’ he nodded. Then we splashed through a stream, and it wasn’t too dark for me to see a little native chap squatting by the side of a low garden wall there, or to recognise him. It was that ex-policeman—I could see the scar on his forehead—somehow or other I was expecting to see him—and, without thinking, I jumped out of the carriage, stumbled for an instant, and then sprang at him, but he’d seen me too, and fled. I had Don Pedro’s revolver with me, and fired as he jumped the low wall and darted among some trees. I was after him in a second—of course I had missed him, I always was a rotten shot with a revolver at any time—and then he fired back, and a bullet sung past my elbow. I caught sight of his white shirt among the trees, and fired at him again, and he bolted out of the garden, across the road, and into the forest. It was hopeless to follow him there. The pistol-shots had frightened the ponies, and they were dashing madly along the road, Gerald’s kit-bag flying out. I picked it up, and lugged it along to the front of that big building—a gaudy-looking kind of place, nearly all windows, with a flat roof, verandahs and balconies all round it, and ’_El Casino_,’ in big gilt letters over the door, half-hidden by a huge black and green flag which hung down over the entrance.